


Survival Instict

by Dhdhhdgsgs



Category: American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Activism, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Bipolar Disorder, Bisexual Male Character, Consensual Underage Sex, Gay Male Character, HIV/AIDS, Lesbian Character, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Sex Work, Trans Female Character, Underage Drinking, Underage Prostitution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 05:07:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9220037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dhdhhdgsgs/pseuds/Dhdhhdgsgs
Summary: Fear hangs thick in the air, inescapable, ever-present. The world, however, is kicked to their feet and forced to go about their lives. Work through the motions.John, he’s new at this, new at being on his own, if this really is his own. New York City, a crappy apartment, three jobs, med school, his mother’s last name. Alex, hidden lives and stolen moments, scraping by, trying his best. A collision, brought together. Fumbling in the dark. Started on the first of December, 1986, and stretching on until it hangs limply in the future; unknown.But all that matters is then, the moment, when all everybody wants to do is survive.





	

**Author's Note:**

> WOW ok so this universe has been lingering at the back of my mind for a while, so bare with me. I'm really excited about writing this :3 ilya

_First of December_  
_Year 1986_  
_Day One_

The world froze for a moment, immortalized in the simple press of a fingertip, lights blurring and cars halting and snow lingering, half fallen in the sky. The moment ended abruptly and the world resumed with the blare of traffic and the obnoxious ring of a car alarm.

It was 1:44 am, or something, and John was sitting atop the stairs of the fire escape, hanging from the window of his apartment, holding his camera. 

A disclaimer: it was hardly this poetic in John’s mind. He wasn’t thinking about eternalized moments, or anything that flowery. Just taking a picture. He deemed the next one acceptable and dropped his camera, letting it hang against his chest from the strap around his neck, and climbed back over his window and into his living room. He pulled off his socks, stumbling over himself while he simultaneously made his way to his bedroom.

He plopped his camera on the floor besides the bed and threw his wadded up ball of socks into the first open drawer of his dresser. His sweater then joined them there, before he crawled into bed to burrow underneath the covers.

The old furnace rattled on rhythmically, joining the constant creak of his apartment complex, as John cracked open his textbook to read through his highlighted terms for the section of the chapter he was to be quizzed on the next day.

He was twenty two, in his first year of medical school. A doctor was deemed a perfectly acceptable career path by his father, and John was okay with it. He liked helping people, and he was good at memorizing things. Pre-med called for a lot of memorization. (John knew quite a few names of the bones within the human body.)

Besides, the process of becoming a doctor was a long and tedious one, and John appreciated the added time. He wasn’t ready to go into the workforce, not yet. He needed to be young for a few extra years. He was rushed along in the process of growing up, when he was a teeanger. Shoved forward roughy, sending him tripping through his stumbling maturity. It was nice to be rooted in place, for a little. John would be an adult soon enough to satisfy his father, so for the time being, he was okay where he was.

The whole photo thing was his own project, outside of school. There was a time when he might’ve liked to be a full-time artist, but as he got older that dream was washed away, until all the colors blurred together into illegibility. He loved taking pictures, loved drawing. Landscapes and animals, especially turtles, those were his favorites. He didn’t have much time to draw or paint, anymore, but he could take photos. His friend Peggy was in a photography class, and she processed his photos for him at the lab at The Art Academy. They were for a gallery, which was currently titled “The Place to be” (being Manhattan) unless he thought of something more brilliant at a later time. They were just snapshots of his life around the city, thrown together chronologically. Nothing important, not really, but John felt drawn to each one of them. The ones he choose, anyway, that had made the cut and hadn’t been shoved into his castaways, which was a thick and battered manilla folder with “SHIT” scribbled on the front in fading sharpie.

He didn’t throw any of his stuff away, because he figured one day he may look back at them and boost his declining self esteem with the reassurances of “hey, at least my old pictures used to be 60% shittier than they are now”

John had the whole system of his mind figured out, the wires sorted out from their tangles and labeled accordingly, all organized and neat. But, of course, there was his depression, that came in like a raging storm whenever John was his closest to being actually well off, for once, and scattered all the wires around until he had to sit his damn self down and fumble through them all over again.

It wasn’t like his life was relatively bad, or anything. At least not so much anymore. Even then, it wasn’t. Sure, his mom died and his dad was a major asshole, but that wasn’t unmanageable. Well. It sucked, a lot, but John soldiered through.

His mom passed when he was very young, and he had little memories of her, but sort of resented her for leaving him. If she had stayed alive, John never would’ve had to move in with his dad, who was a grade A douchebag.

Here’s an outline of the whole situation:  
John’s mother, Elena De la Cruz Ballesteros, moved from San Juan to the north of Charleston, South Carolina. She was freshly nineteen and looking for work. She had a headful of kinky curls and rich dark skin, black. The only job she could get was as a maid.  
Elena found work at the hand of some prosperous lawyer who dreamed of being in politics one day. He was, as fate would have it, Henry Laurens (that was John’s father), married “happily”, the perfect image of a traditional American man. Of course, that included lavishly racist.  
Yeah, not so much. He sure did hate coloreds, but not quite enough to pass up on the opportunity to bend Elena over his desk and cheat on his wife. Elena took it, because she couldn’t lose that damn job.  
Elena got pregnant, she told Henry, and he ordered her never to speak to him again. He’d pay her child support accordingly. Hush money. No one could know about this, it would completely tarnish his supposedly well earned reputation and knock him off of any chance of finally being senator one day.  
Elena took her pregnant self back to North Chuck and had her baby. Named him John. Not Laurens, though, because her boy was a Ballesteros. They lived happily together, John was happy. (He didn’t remember that, though.)  
He was only five when his mother died.  
All of Elena’s family was in Puerto Rico, so with nowhere for John to go, his father was alerted of his existence. At that point, Henry Laurens was a congressman, practically brushing fingertips with becoming senator. The media being exposed to the fact that he had a bastard Latino son was hardly good for his name, but neither was letting his own flesh and blood rot on the streets. So he begrudgingly took John in and promised to “fix him up” (because obviously he needed fixing-- he was half Puerto Rican black, of course he was trouble)  
Henry still got what he wanted, though. 1981, he was elected into office.

John’s father spent most of his time with his son trying to mold him into someone else, someone he wasn’t. But John wasn’t malleable. He was good at pretending, drawing a veil over his face, a guise, but Henry could never quite change him. He tried, and failed. He’d yell and scold and spit out nasty things, maybe even smack John around when he got drunk, but John was solid in his identity. No amount of cruelty could make him someone he wasn’t, could shake his morals and beliefs around.

He and his father got into their biggest fight over Christmas Break of last year, when John had made the trip down to Charleston for the holidays. They got into a relatively minor spat about where John was going to attend medical school after he finished pre-med at NYU, because Henry thought he should go somewhere “less artsy.” John argued back that there was nothing artsy about becoming a doctor, thank you very much, and that Henry was just paranoid. Besides, he liked NYU, and he knew the city. His friends were there, his job, his entire life. Then, the whole thing just swelled into a chaotic mess of criticisms, why John was a terrible son, why Henry was so ashamed of him, why he would never amount to anything but a n... -- Well. That wasn’t a very nice word.

Now, it had been almost a year since John had consequently been cut off from his inheritance and living on his own earnings. It was hard, something John had never really been exposed to, before. He was so used to being spoon fed everything in his life. He was a trust fund baby, even if he and Henry never saw eye to eye, or held a constructive conversation, and never expected to have to actually work for his privileges. Financially speaking.

But he was trekking along. He worked at a diner, and at the gas station down the road, and at the library, as well as picking up hours at the clinic as an intern. (He basically just got coffee for the real doctors, assisted the nurses who let him, and helped with heavy lifting. The whole setup was amazingly underfunded, and so John felt bad asking for a raise. It was basically volunteer work. But he felt obliged.)

It was really busy. Living. Before everything, the fight, John thought he was busy, too. There was school, and his art, and his friends. Unimportant pastimes and hobbies. Reading books and listening to the radio, going to movies and sneaking around with boys. But now, he knew that wasn’t really busy. That was just not being bored. Keeping himself occupied. Having to work so often shoved him and forced him to stumble away from his preconceived ideas of life’s hardships.

* * *

 

_Still Day One, But Now Later_

John rubbed at his face until white spots danced betwixt the darkness behind his eyelids. He scraped the sleep from the corners with his fingernails, rolling his fingers together to rid them of the new moisture there afterwards, and glanced over at his clock. It took a few seconds for the blur to clear and for him to register what time it was. His alarm was set for five past seven everyday, but for whatever reason he still felt the need to check.

His limbs were thick with tiredness as he crawled out of bed, his feet hitting the wooden floorboards with a light thump. Out of his bedroom, down the hall. Bathroom. He took a piss and slid into the shower. The water was cold because the water heater was a pile of shit, so John utilized the temperature to wake himself up a little. He needed it. He brushed his teeth there, standing under the spray, and spit the froth onto the bathtub floor, watched it be dragged down the drain.

His hair was still wet when he pulled his sweater on, the tendrils sticking to his face, John finding himself having to spit them from his tongue. He slid into some jeans and toed on his boots, shuffling into his winter coat, which was pretty nice, considering his father bought it for him last Christmas before their fight. After winding his scarf around his neck, he was out the door.

It was around Eight o’clock when he left, and John’s shift started at Nine. He got to the diner for breakfast and coffee with enough time to sit around absentmindedly at the bar for a while. Each day he did this, because he got his food there for free. Mrs. Washington was an angel and said she’d rather cook up an extra plate everyday than have one of her best servers go hungry. She was too good to him.

“You are going to freeze to death if you are outside with your hair wet.” Lafayette told him, resting the lip of the coffee pot in his hand along John’s mug, topping him off.

John gave his thanks and took his mug between his palms, blowing through the steam to cool it down before taking a sip. He lifted his eyes to focus on Lafayette’s critical expression after swallowing. “I don’t think the thirty second walks from here to my car and my car to the library will kill me.”

“Suit yourself. Are we still going grocery shopping after work?”

“If you want.” John said, cocking his eyebrows.

“Please. The heater in my car broke and I have had no chance to get it fixed. It’s an icebox. Your truck is so toasty.”

Lafayette went to go and attend to his customers, leaving John to finish. He did.

He wiped his mouth off with his napkin, before crumpling it up to lay over his empty plate and standing from his stool. It scraped obnoxiously against the tile. “See ya’, Laf.” John collected his coat and scarf, kicking the stool back into it’s previous place. He reached for his mug to take one last mouthful.

“You will. Have a good day at the library, ange.” He smiled, looking over his shoulder as he stood at a booth and passed a man’s breakfast over to him. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t!”

  
John had known Lafayette since he first started working at the Washington’s diner, when he moved to New York in ‘84, two years past. He was twenty back then, fresh from South Carolina, scared and unsure, feeling his way through the darkness. He got himself a job there before any of the others-- those came after he and Henry’s blowout-- and Lafayette was already an employee, Mrs. and Mr. Washington’s obvious favorite, their pseudo son, really. Lafayette was kind and funny and easy to speak with, “colorful” as Henry would dub him, clearly queer. He was the one to sort of nudge John into his self-acceptance; hold his arm as he stepped out of the closet he had been trapped in his entire life. Lafayette loved John, tenderly, and John completely reciprocated. He knew that Lafayette was his first real friend, his best friend, someone he could truly and entirely depend on. John was unsure if he ever would’ve survived New York without Lafayette, and was glad to not know so.

John spent the first half of his morning restocking returned books in their respective shelves, pulling around a cart behind him. The library was mostly empty, early in the morning, before the usual rush of students that came after the high school let out or after classes began at the university. John relished the quiet, the calm. It was his favorite part about working at the library, being separate from the world pulsating outside the door. Enveloped in peace; the method of sliding books back into their rightful places, the tips of his fingers pushing up against their battered spines, smoothing his thumbs over the nametags pasted there, taking the forgotten bookmarks shoved between the pages and tucking them away.

* * *

 

It didn’t get much busier the rest of the day, which had grown into normality in the winter months. Kids didn’t want to have and make the trek from school in the freezing cold, which John thought made sense.

He was sitting at the front desk when someone approached him. This guy was wearing a thick cardigan, not even a damn coat, a scrappy backpack hanging off one shoulder. The swells of his cheeks and the hook of his nose were flushed, miniscule snowflakes trapped in the swoop of his dark eyelashes, the lenses of his rectangular wireframe glasses fogged over. He had light peach-fuzz over his lip and dotted along his chin, his face full and stature small. John figured he was maybe 16 or 17 tops. He gathered his cardigan closer around himself and took a few long steps, wrapping his fingers around the straps of his backpack. His hands were bright red. John was pretty sure he could hear his teeth chattering.

“Hi.” He said, adjusting his weight and wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Can you tell me where I can find some books on Law?” His words sounded rehearsed, like he had been practicing saying them a few times before speaking to John. Also, notably, they were tinged with a slight accent, something hispanic. John was never good at identifying specific ethnicities, so he assumed Mexican or maybe Puerto Rican.

“Yeah, sure.” John said, “Nonfiction, the government shelf. It’s labeled Gov. In the back by the couches.” He raised a hand to point a finger in the general direction.

“Thanks.” The guy smiled, still a little breathless, nudging his glasses up the aqualine bridge of his nose, before going to follow John’s directions.

On instinct, John stopped him. “Hey!” He said, causing him to balance back on his heels and turn halfway to look over his shoulder. “You want some coffee, or something, man? There’s a fresh pot in the back room and you look freezing.”

“Oh.” The guy ran his tongue over his teeth beneath his upper lip and scratched his finger over his slightly stubbly chin. “Thank you, but I don’t have any money.”

John laughed. “No, I was offering for free. Let me get you some.” He lifted himself from his swivel chair, smoothing his palms over the wrinkles in his jeans. The guy’s eyes flicked up to keep eye contact, John have a solid few inches on him.

He followed him into the back room, which was fine, John didn’t care, and stood against the doorframe as John gathered a mug from the cabinet. It was his, the one he had taken from his house and forgotten here a few months back.

“So, why you lookin’ at law books?” John asked, his back facing the guy as he began to pour him his cup.

He scoffed. “Some stupid kid I know was spewing some conservative quote unquote ‘family values’ garbage. He’s so far up Reagan’s asshole he hasn’t taken the time to actually look back upon our legal system and back his statements with solid facts. He thinks he knows everything. I told him I was going to prove him wrong, because unlike him, I actually cite my evidence.”

John huffed a laugh at the guy’s word choice. “I know the type. You take cream or sugar?”

“A little cream and a spoonful.” He answered. John fixed it accordingly, before picking it up and walking it over to the guy, who nodded his thanks and slipped his fingers under the handle, brushing over John’s, just slightly. He lifted it to his lips to blow on it, his lips puckering. Then, he raised his eyes back to John, blinking thrice with those dark eyelashes. The snow had melted away. “I’m Alex, by the way. Alex de Hámel. Thanks for the coffee.”

“John Ballesteros. No problem” John held out his hand for Alex to shake, who did so.

He gripped him tightly, his grasp strong, palms rough and pads of his fingers calloused. It surprised John. It didn’t feel like a high schooler’s hand. “Ballesteros? Puerto Rican, yeah?” His tongue tucked behind his front teeth, the small gap there, almost making a “th” sounds at the “st” in John’s last name. He was Puerto Rican, then, too. John knew because that was how his mother had said it.

“I am.” John took his hand back. “So are you.”

Alex grinned broadly, nodding. “Can't lose the accent.”

John found it charming, but didn’t say so. Instead, he meandered out of the door, hearing Alex’s footfalls behind him as he followed. John decided to just go ahead and lead him to the Government section of the Nonfiction shelves. He stopped there, turning around to face him, motioning him towards the books. “Here. You can probably find what you’re looking for here.”

Alex took a few steps to walk between the shelves, scanning his eyes over the spines, reading the various titles and authors. He bumped his glasses up with his knuckle, holding his coffee to his chest, and looked over his shoulder at John with a lopsided smile. “Thanks, man.”

“No problem.”

John noted that Alex was cute, because that little voice sitting in his mind never seemed to shut up. His hair was thick and bunched back into a ponytail, his cheeks still a little pink from the cold, his eyes round and the color of something warm and comforting. Maybe coffee beans. Even the silly facial hair and thin gap between his front teeth were entirely endearing.

John went back to the front desk. He cracked open the textbook he was absently perusing through, chewing on the cap of his fading neon yellow highlighter, pushing back the flyaway frizzy curls from his forehead. He was halfway through the section when Alex came back up to drop a few books on his desk, settling the mug besides them.

John dropped his highlighter between the pages, pushing the book aside and taking hold of Alex’s to mark down. “You found what you needed?”

“I did, thanks.” Alex slid off his backpack to set down, working the zipper open to shove the books inside when John handed them to him. John was afraid the strap would snap while Alex was walking home with all the extra weight.

He glanced outside, and noted that the snow had picked up significantly, paleing the sky in diagonal sheets.

“You walking home?” He asked, looking back at Alex.

“Yeah.” Alex said, accepting the last book to shove in his bag, scooting the zipper back up.

“You’ll freeze to death. You should seriously wear your coat.”

“I’m fine.” Alex swallowed uncomfortably, his adam’s apple bobbing slightly. He shuffled his backpack back onto his shoulders, and John could hear his foot tapping muffled patterns into the carpeted floor.

“You can hang out here until it calms down. You’ll blow away if you go out there.”

Alex scoffed, biting on his lower lip. “Is that a crack about my size?”

  
John laughed, balancing his highlighter between his knuckles. “Hey, you said it, not me. The couches are pretty comfortable, if you wanna do your homework here or something. Or you can use one of the computers, if you like.” He nodded toward the table where there were a few lined up, clunky and beige, puffy black headphones hanging off the back, spirling cords tangled together messily. “I get off in thirty, if you don’t mind waiting I can give you a drive.”

  
“It’s really not a big deal.” Alex said, raising his chin and squaring back his shoulders. “I was gonna stay and work on a research paper here, anyways, but I don’t need your charity, Ballesteros.”

“Okay.” John raised his hands in surrender, twisting up his eyebrows and lowering his eyes. “Just an offer. If you change your mind I’m up here.”

Alex didn’t change his mind. He was still there, having plugged himself into one of computers, typing rapidly, brows drawn together in concentration, as John was leaving. He slid into his coat and wound up his scarf, wiggling his fingers into his mittens, and grabbed his messenger bag, heavy with his textbook. He said hello to Roberta, who had the shift after him, and waved goodbye to Alex, who raised his hand in return, halfheartedly.

* * *

 

When John arrived at the diner, it was busy with the kids who stopped there after school to do their homework and drink hot chocolate in the booths. Lafayette was still working, his shift stretching on until late, and looked utterly haggard.

He muttered an unenthusiastic ‘hello’ as John lightly shouldered past him to go and change into his uniform in the men’s restroom.

He tugged his sweater over his head, his hair poofing up at the static electricity before he smoothed it down with some water. His khakis were getting too large for him, he noticed, hanging loose around his tapering waist, baggy around his legs, as was his shirt. So, he tucked it in extra tight and slid his belt buckle a notch further than usual. He had lithe muscles, because he ran regularly, being the most inexpensive way to keep in shape, but used to box and lift weights, too. He didn’t have enough spare time to go to the rec center to work out, anymore, and was gradually losing his previous strong build.

Or maybe he was sick.

John stared at his reflection in the mirror for a long time, until he snapped himself out of it with a shake of his head and left the bathroom. No. He would know if he was sick, he worked at the AIDS clinic. He would know. He was just loosing some weight. He would start lifting his textbooks as makeshift weights before his runs, then. He wished eating healthy wasn’t so fucking expensive, too.

“What was taking you so long?” Lafayette asked with a huff, his arms full of plates, piled high with food. He nodded toward the counter before John could answer, where there were a few more meals sitting under the heat lamp.

He had work until eleven, which was particularly brutal. After the dinner rush, everything was painfully slow, which made the time last even longer. John and Lafayette drank coffee behind the counter and Lafayette quizzed John by letting him name all the bones in his hand, holding onto his palm and pressing his fingertip to the jut of each one.

Closing time came, finally, after it seemed as if time was crawling along ploddingly slow, and Lafayette and John swept the floors and pulled down the blinds before changing into regular clothes in the bathroom. Lafayette didn’t need to work, because he was stupidly wealthy, but decided to because he cared so deeply for Mr. and Mrs. Washington. His clothes were nice and well kept, colorful as his personality, sensible and fashionable. Lafayette gave John his hand-me-downs, but John hardly wore them in fear of drawing too much attention to himself. Lafayette was very vibrant.

The two of them loaded into John’s trunk, Lafayette immediately turning the heater up all the way, which rattled and blasted icy air until finally growing warm. He shivered and wrapped an arm around himself, his teeth chattering as he fiddled with the knobs on console, turning on the radio and finding a station playing Christmas music.

John and Lafayette sang along to the obnoxious carols, Lafayette wiggling around in his seat and throwing his hands over his heart in an attempt to dance.

John loved Christmas, because no matter what, it was always the same. Despite the ever changing world, the nonstop transformation, everything spinning and tilting out of focus on its axis, people growing sicker and sicker, there was always Christmas. Twinkling lights and jolly snowmen and santa hats and ornamented pine trees. Festivity allowed John to pause and sit back, let himself be happy and forget the bustle of the world around him.

Lafayette loved Christmas, too, probably even more so than John. He wasn’t even Christian, but hardly let that dampen his spirits and block off his holiday cheer. As soon as he was crossing off November 30th on his calendar, he was draping his apartment in lights and assembling his plastic-bristled christmas tree.

It was nice to be silly, and Christmas was a good excuse.

They went grocery shopping at the store a few doors down from John’s apartment, collecting brown bags full of various boxes of pasta and other easily prepared food. John was not a cook, not at all, and had only recently learned to do as much as prepare mac ‘n cheese or scrambled eggs. Lafayette helped him shop, and pointed out things easy for John to make, writing down simple recipes in winding cursive to pin to his refrigerator.

* * *

 

_Day Two_

John and Lafayette left the grocery store at some change past twelve, pushing a squeaky cart full of paper bags to the parking lot, one of the wheels kicking out of place and squealing as John pushed it forward. Lafayette put all of the bags into the back of John’s truck, before John wheeled the cart to its lobby and joined him back in the warmth of his truck to drive home.

Lafayette spent the night on John’s couch, claiming to be too tired to make it through the drive back to the diner to collect his car (which had faulty air conditioning, anyways.) John gave him one of his pillows and the spare fleece blanket he kept in his closet, and let him use the one extra unopened toothbrush in the cabinet under his sink. Before he went to sleep, Lafayette padded into John’s room to look over his newly added photographs.

“These are nice.” He said, looking over his shoulder at John who was curled up on his bed, thumbing through his dense stack of flashcards. John looked up and smiled, focusing his gaze back onto his defined terms until there was a creak of footsteps and an added weight on his mattress. Lafayette sighed softly and rolled over to rest his head on John’s abdomen, his hair tickling John through the thin fabric of his tank top, and blinked up at the stained light fixture on the ceiling.

John reached down to absentmindedly comb his fingers through Lafayette’s tight curls, smoothing through the knots and tangles, listening to the little huffs of breath that resulted.

John set his flashcards beside him and reached for his camera, flicking it on and peering through the viewfinder as he adjusted the focus, letting the blur fade and sharpen on the slope of Lafayette’s face, the bump of his nose and flutter of his lengthy eyelashes. He moved his hair from his forehead and one handedly pressed down on shutter button. It flashed and Lafayette squinted his eyes, his nose crinkling up. John kept the camera before his face as his friend straightened himself up, sitting over his his knees with a playful smile. He swatted at John as he snapped a few more photographs, before scooting back to arch his back and situate his hands on his hips, pouting his lips and batting his eyelashes.

Lafayette stole the camera and took a few shaky photos of John, hovering halfway over his thighs. John laughed, pushing his palm over the lens, causing the camera to tumble between them, going off accidentally, and shoved Lafayette’s hands away before he could grab at it. Their noses touched together as they wrestled, slightly, and on instinct they were tilting together, hands buried in hair and the lines of their chests flush, mouths sealed hotly together. A few long moments of carefully moving lips and slick tongues, and John was pushing Lafayette away.

“No, stop.” He said, scooting back against his headboard.

“Why?” Lafayette questioned, smoothing back his hair.

“...We shouldn’t.” He said, casting his eyes away.

“You think I’m sick?” Lafayette asked. John watched his eyebrows draw together out of the corner of his eyes.

“You never know.” John told him, staring back at him. His heart pounded.

“...You think you are sick?” Lafayette ventured, his expression soft and scared.

John looked away, again. “I’m just losing some weight, s’all.”

Lafayette framed his palm over John’s cheek, pads of his fingers pressed up to his angular cheekbone. “That means nothing, mon ange. You are fine. No worries, hm?”

“I guess.” John sighed, while Lafayette rolled off of him to lay at his side, resting his head on his shoulder. He felt his fingers being joined by Lafayette’s, twined together. “I feel like a sitting duck, y’know? Like, it’s inevitable. Every gay man in New York has it, it’s bound to be my turn, soon, right?”

“Not if you’re careful.” Lafayette offered.

“I’m so tired of being careful.”

  
“Yeah.” He agreed, the movement of his hair as he nodded ticking John’s bicep. “But, you have seen them. Everyone who is sick. Isn’t it worth it to be careful? Imagine, to die so young, stolen from the world, from your destiny.”

“Right.” John agreed. He did not tell Lafayette, however, that it wasn’t death he feared, but instead all that came before it. He could deal with being ‘stolen from the world’, as his friend had worded it, but turning from a person to a pathetic shell of being, a skeleton, slowly fading into nothingness, helpless and hopeless, ugly and sad. John couldn’t handle that. Maybe it would be better just to die now, get hit by a truck or something, and avoid all that. He’d prefer something quick over something drawn out.

Lafayette patted John’s chest and crawled from his mattress to go and sleep on the couch. John sighed and turned onto his side, pulling the covers up to his chin and closing his eyes.

* * *

 

  
_Day Two, Later_

The next day, John had classes early on in the morning, so he drove Lafayette home beforehand and stopped to fill his thermos with coffee at the diner. He had a shift at the library, again, from one until seven, at closing.  
It was sometime around four as he was making rounds reorganizing the shelves, putting books in their proper places and taping down the labels neater with the roll of scotch tape he had clamped between his teeth. He was tired, because he hadn’t slept much the night prior and had been scrambling around all day, so his movements were sluggish. He trudged around, dragging himself along, taping and stacking. He heard someone enter and glanced over the shelves thoughtlessly, not paying any mind to whoever it was.

Soon after, Alex from yesterday was standing in front of him, clutching a few of the books he had borrowed under his arm. He still wasn’t wearing a coat, but the snow was hardly as relentless as it was, so he didn’t seem as frozen over.

“You’re back.” John observed, his movements slowing as he slid the book in his hand where it belonged.

“The books were helpful.” Alex noted, tapping his foot. He met John’s eyes easily, his chin tilted up to do so, posture proud and stiff, like he had a board strapped to his spine, like he was trying to make himself taller. He wasn’t even that short, probably 5’6 or ‘7, but compared to John’s ‘11 he was tiny.

“You’re already done with them?” John asked with a grin, impressed. Alex nodded. “Huh. Well, return is up at the front desk.”

“Thanks.” He said, casting his eyes down for a moment as he situated his grip. His eyes went back up. Knuckles pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. John noted that there was some tape wrapped around the hinge on the left side, and a yellowing bruise over that cheekbone. Alex seemed to notice that John had observed this, and moved his hair (down today) over to cover it. Then, he was reaching into the pocket of his too-big jeans he was practically swimming in, and produced a couple crumpled dollar bills, opening his palm and shoving it in John’s direction. “Here.” He said, with a nod. “For the coffee.”

“What?” John laughed. He looked down at the money. “Dude, it’s alright. It’s not even my coffee, I didn’t pay for it.”

  
“Just take it.” Alex said, jabbing his hand further. “I don’t like being pitied, okay? And free stuff is just tangible pity.”

John sighed, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“Please!” Alex insisted, his eyebrows shooting up, his voice raised to a dramatic stage whisper.

“Fine,” John relented with a huff, taking it. “But I wasn’t pitying you, I was just being nice.” He smoothed out the money, the two dollars. “You’re 50 cents over. Only a dollar and a half.” He told him.

“I don’t have any change.” Alex said.

“Well, if I took it that’d be free stuff. You pity me?” John shot back.

Alex rolled his eyes, exasperated, and snatched back one of the dollars. “Fine. I’ll bring you your change tomorrow.”

“You just assume I’ll be here?” John asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Well, you were here today.”

John shrugged. “Just so happened.” He thought for a second, looking Alex over. “I work at Washington’s diner, down the street. You can bring it to me there.”

“Fine. Sounds good.” Alex said. He started tapping his foot again. “You be there around this time?”

“Sure will. Until eleven.”

Alex readjusted the books and wet his chapped lips with the tip of his tongue. “I’ll be there.” He nodded, turning on his heel and making it a few steps until John called his name. He looked over his back with his eyebrows raised questioningly.  
“How did it go with that kid? The one in Reagan’s ass?”

  
Alex laughed at that, a good laugh, the corners of his eyes crinkling up and lips spreading to reveal his teeth, the gap there. “Fine. I totally schooled him and he told me my opinion isn’t valid because I’m not from this country. But, that means he knows I was right because he couldn’t think of a better rebuttal.”

John grinned. “Good man. Glad to hear it.”

“See you with your 50 cents tomorrow, Ballesteros.” Alex said, resuming making his way up to the front desk to return his books.

He remembered John’s last name. That was nice.

* * *

 

_Day Three_

John got his fifty cents around 4 o’clock, just as Alex had told him. He walked right up to the counter as John was refilling some lady’s coffee, waited for him to finish, and thrusted his hand in his direction. In his palm sat two quarters. He eyed John expectantly.

John laughed and reached for the change, sliding it into the back pocket of his pants. “You came.”

  
“I’m a man of my word.” Alex said, adjusting his backpack. He blew a strand of hair from over his glasses, only for it to fall back down against his cheek.

John noticed that the small bruise he had seen on Alex’s cheekbone the day prior was healing, turning fainter than it already had been. John wondered to himself how he had gotten it. Alex seemed like the type to get in fights, just like John had been (still was), but also seemed like the type that was smart enough to not need to resort to his fists. Hell, he had checked out a stack of books just to prove one guy wrong, did he really need to get smacked around whenever someone pissed him off?

“Guess so.” John said. “Thanks, man.”

“It’s fine.” Alex said. He looked around the diner, before reaching into his pocket. Just like the day prior, he produced a few balled up dollars. “Can I get some coffee?” He smiled at John, toothy and uneven, like he had just told a joke. It almost was one, because after all that trouble over the coffee in the first place, he was asking for another. With money to pay with, this time.

“Yeah, ‘course.” John smiled. He motioned towards the bar with the pot of coffee in his hand. “Take a seat.”

Alex did so, shuffling into a stool, hooking his backpack over the back, pulling out a paperback book beforehand, riddled with crinkled sticky-notes pushing past the dog-eared pages. When he cracked it open, the text was decorated with various colored highlighters. John peered over the counter as he stood behind it, then, and felt his lips pull up at the corners. “Hope that isn’t one that you borrowed from the library.”

Alex looked up and pushed away a stray strand of hair hanging in his face, holding it there as he stared at John. He smiled, again. “I returned all those, figured you’d remember.”

“Got a lot on my mind.” John said, cocking his eyebrows and tapping a finger to his temple. Alex’s eyes caught on his hand, (the left one, John was left handed) on the silver band wrapped around his middle finger, and he smirked before looking back down to his thoroughly marked up book.

“I’m sure you do.” He said, pushing up his glasses. John poured him his coffee dutifully. He felt Alex’s eyes on his ears, then. They were pierced. He might as well be wrapped up in a rainbow flag and glittering with rhinestones.

Lafayette told him, later, that he was sure no one noticed. If they did, they didn’t know what those things meant. John argued that they did, because Alex was eyeing him like he had learned his deepest, darkest secret. Lafayette scoffed and asked him why he even cared. John didn’t know.

“This is New York, ange.” Lafayette was telling him. They were walking down the sidewalk, to where John’s truck was parked. It was only flurrying, but there was already a few inches of snow caked onto the ground, grinded up into gray slush on the sides of the road. Lafayette was wrapped up in a coat and a matching knitted scarf hat and pair of mittens, carrying a messenger bag full of his clothes. The tip of his nose was red and there were snowflakes in his eyelashes. “People would not come here if they are not prepared to have queers serve them coffee.”

“What if they think I have AIDS and never come back and we loose all business?” John asked, in protest.

“Unless you are bleeding or cumming on the plates, they are fine.” Lafayette laughed. He shook his head, his curls bobbing underneath his hat, the little pom-pom on the crown of his head doing the same.

“They don’t know that.”

  
Lafayette stopped walking with a loud sigh, standing in front of John and grabbing him by the shoulders, forcing him to stop, as well. “If we were going to loose all business because there is a possibility one of the servers has AIDS, we already would have, hm? You did not just become gay today. You don’t need to hide so much, John, this is not South Carolina. New York.”

John sniffed and looked away. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

Lafayette let go of his biceps and patted John’s cheek, offering a warm, close lipped smile. “Good boy. Now, we are walking. Too cold to stop.” He said, turning to continue on his way, the snow crunching underneath his boots. John huffed and followed behind him.

John and Lafayette drove to Lafayette’s apartment, which was considerably nicer than John’s. He still had his trust fund, and was exceptionally wealthy. He had never been close with his parents, but got along with them well enough. They lived in Albany, had moved to the States when Lafayette was fourteen. Lafayette migrated down to the city to go to college and had never made his way back. He spent their money with ease, repaid them by not talking to them, he said. They would be awfully disappointed in him if they saw what he had become, supposedly.

Lafayette lived with his and John’s other friend, Hercules, who tailored suits at a shop a few blocks away. He and Lafayette had known each other for years, had grown so close they were more brothers than friends. He was waiting for them when they came inside, watched them stomp their boots free of the snow plastered onto the soles at the placement, and gestured to the wrinkled up brown paper bag on the coffee table.

“Dinner.”

Lafayette smiled at him, shaking himself out of his coat and hanging it up, before bending over to slip off his boots. Then were the mittens and the hat and the scarf, and he was left in his sweater and blue jeans, hopping over to the couch with socked feet.

Lafayette rutted through the bag and produced a set of chopsticks to snap open, prying off the lid to a thing of noodles and curling against Hercules’ side to peer at the notebook he was marking up. John sat beside him. He felt something dig into the flesh of his backside and frowned, reaching behind his back to jam his fingers into his pocket.

50 cents.

He snorted lightly to himself and dropped the change on the table, while Lafayette went up to fiddle with the knobs of his television and adjust the wires, the channels murky with static until he found some movie John had seen a multitude of times. Lafayette sat back down, kicking his feet up on the table and taking his noodles back, his forearm brushing up against John’s. The movie played and the three of them ate. John’s two quarters sat dull and unspectacular before them.


End file.
